The present invention relates to the field of laminated plastic display devices and includes presentation folders for use in marketing goods and services.
A common type of presentation folder is made of rectangular paper stock having a thickness of about ten mils. A centrally positioned vertical fold separates a left half portion from a right half portion, at least one portion having a pouch formed at the bottom of the folder for containing sales literature and the like. Customized graphic indicia such as a company logo and a description of the literature within the folder and other information is sometimes printed on the cover of the folder by a print shop. Sending the folder to an outside print shop can result in detrimental delays and furthermore is costly, particularly if only small numbers of folders are to be printed.
We thus designed a presentation folder whereby a thin sheet of such customized graphic indicia, which can be quickly and economically produced by a desk top publishing PC program, is heat laminated to the front face of the folder. An economical structured transparent plastic polyester sheet is provided and is tack welded to the paper folder and a heat activatable polyethylene adhesive upon the polyester, faces the front of the paper folder. The user thereafter inserts the indicia bearing display sheet between the transparent polyester plastic sheet and the folder sheet and the three items are laminated together by heat and pressure.
As explained in detail in prior art U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,843, issued to Roger Kuhns et al., and assigned to Avant Incorporated of West Concord Mass., the transparent plastic cover sheet which was intentionally stressed during manufacture to strengthen it, became unstressed and shrank after lamination, and the result was a severely warped or bowed product which was unacceptable from an aesthetic point of view. The solution to this problem, also described in the patent, of warpage or bowing of large heat activatable plastic sheets when laminated by the user to the front covers of the folders, involved laminating a backing sheet to substantial portions of the inside face of the folder opposite the front face before shipment to the user, and as a result, the user receives a bowed intermediate product, which however becomes unbowed upon the final lamination of the finished product by the user.